All posts tagged Carbon tax

Jerry Taylor has a very big ambition: He wants conservatives to embrace a carbon tax.

A longtime energy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, Mr. Taylor has formed a new organization in part to champion what he sees as a grand bargain. Republican lawmakers would embrace a sweeping set of taxes on carbon emissions in exchange for liberals agreeing to cut other corporate taxes and eliminate federal fuel standards and greenhouse-gas regulations. Read More »

Thanks to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are considered air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has to do something to control them. But the act is particularly ill-suited to controlling a non-toxic global pollutant. The law requires the EPA to set separate emissions guidelines for each category of existing stationary pollution sources–one for power plants, another for oil refineries and so on–and then each state is supposed to write a compliance plan for every category. This fractured process is likely to lead to large differences among states and across industries.

A study by a group that advocates curbing U.S. reliance on oil said changing the kinds of cars and trucks on the road in the U.S. could improve economic growth over the long term and reduce the budget deficit.

Instituting a carbon tax could help reduce the deficit and “produce incremental benefits” for the environment, but could also raise the cost of many goods and services, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report Wednesday.

The report outlines the potential consequences of a policy that has become a third-rail issue for many politicians in both parties, despite its potential to raise government revenue at a time of tight budgets.

Though President Barack Obama has said he wants to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to climate change, the White House has said it would “never” propose taxing them. Mr. Obama has acknowledged that policies to cut emissions raise concerns among Democrats in districts that are heavily reliant on old power plants that run on carbon-emitting fuels like coal. Read More »

The U.S. Senate still has little appetite for imposing a carbon tax on fossil fuels, but lawmakers want to keep the option on the table.

The Senate on a vote of 58-41 rejected an amendment from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) that was viewed as a proxy for establishing a tax on carbon. The vote came as the Senate wrapped up work on a Democratic budget blueprint for fiscal 2014. Read More »

President Barack Obama, in one of his rare press conferences, was asked Wednesday if Congress has the political will to pass a carbon tax to deal with climate change. The idea of a carbon tax has been gaining steady momentum, at least among academics and policy wonks.

Mr. Obama recited some first-term accomplishments, but acknowledged that “we haven’t done enough” to deal with climate change and stressed the country’s “obligation” to deal with the issue lest it burden future generations.

Environmentalists hoping that Mr. Obama would make climate change a signature issue in his second term, much as he did with health care in the first term, are going to have to put the champagne back on ice. Mr. Obama announced no plans for any sweeping sort of climate bill, like the one that foundered on Senate opposition in 2010. And there aren’t too many encouraging noises coming from leading Republicans about the viability of a carbon tax… Read More »

With the fiscal cliff looming and parts of the U.S. still digging out from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, calls for the U.S. to adopt a carbon tax are gathering steam–even though there’s little sign of interest from Congress or the White House.

Today the conservative American Enterprise Institute is holding an all-day, on-the-record discussion of the idea. And the Brookings Institution is unveiling a slate of new measures meant to make the government more effective, including a carbon tax that could raise $1.5 trillion over ten years. All that follows a cascade of carbon-tax advocacy in recent days from the chatteringclasses and a slate of academic work over the summer (not to mention our own two cents).

The idea of a carbon tax is simple: Put a price tag on the harmful emissions from fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, and use the revenues to fund clean-energy development, pay down the deficit or slash taxes. Proponents often describe it as a win-win-win policy, because carbon taxes would penalize things that are bad (pollution) and lower taxes on things that are good (labor and capital). Read More »

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